SNAKES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA by Michael Lawson

Coach Mac told usas we sweltered on the sidelineand the freshmen practiced tacklinghow the heat drove snakesinto the cool steel tubeson his father’s construction sites in Burma,taipans coiled inside the rifled hollows,vipers slunk down the silvery lengths;how when the chatting workerstipped the tubes uprightthe snake inside would slide out, puddlebelow the rim, confoundedby the brightness of the world;how a dart, two lunging prickscould end a man where he loafed,slouching on one leg,sipping shwe yin aye and asking the scoreof the White Angels match;how they called them five-step kraitsbecause the forklift operatorwas dead before the sixth;how after that day, his fathermade him stay in the foreman’s tentand the workers only picked up tubesin pairs—one crouched, ready to lift,one gripping a shovel at the other lip,poised to thrust down,sever skin and spine.

About Michael T. Lawson

Michael Lawson’s work has appeared in Event Horizon, Red River Review, and REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, and he received an honorable mention in Event Horizon's Science in Poetry competition. He currently lives in Chapel Hill, NC, where he is a PhD student in biostatistics.